Category Archives for "It’s Personal"

Three of my uncles are ministers, pastors, preachers. Sometimes I get muddy on the details of their exact titles, so I loosely refer to them as “men of the cloth.” Today I had the pleasure of hearing my uncle, a Methodist minister, give his Sunday sermon at a welcoming church on the outskirts of Seattle. His sermon was thought-provoking and unusual in its delivery – interspersing YouTube clips and footage from one of the Indiana Jones movies to illustrate his point about the difference between “faith” and “belief.” Belief, as I understood his message, is more passive. He pointed out how faith can be misconstrued as a noun, but he challenged his congregation to view it as a verb. Action. Active. Motion. Moving. Compelling.Continue reading

They met a month before I was born, in the summer of 1977 at a dance hall in Salt Lake City. He later confessed to her that he’d gone to the dance that night with the hope he’d “find himself a wife.” They married in Seattle three years later. On a sunny Wednesday, a little over a week ago, I was honored to see them together one last time.Continue reading

This past weekend, I was asked (somewhat incredulously) by a trusted confidant how I can have no goals in life. He knows me well and has heard my occasional morsel, dropped offhandedly here and there, about how I intentionally don’t make goals. I was startled that he had paid attention to my casual asides and for the first time in my life, I felt that I needed to get out of my head and defend myself out loud for why I held this belief. My mind began to churn as I rallied my reasons for living this way and I answered him. Probably not this eloquently, but along a similar vein:Continue reading

“Run away from toxic people. Instead, surround yourself with others who are positive, who support you and want you to succeed.” – Tererai Trent

I first learned about Ms. Trent from a program on Oprah Winfrey’s satellite radio station. Ms. Trent is a Zimbabwean-born woman who was pulled out of school to marry at age eleven, birthed three children by age eighteen, suffered abuse at the hands of her husband, moved to America, and later divorced said husband. Trent caught the attention of Ms. Winfrey after being featured in the book Half the Sky, written by Nicholas Kristof and co-authored by his wife Sheryl WuDunn. Trent was honored by Oprah as an example of a person who wrote down goals and later realized each of those goals. Trent’s goals were to: earn her bachelor’s degree, then her master’s, and eventually graduate with a PhD.Continue reading

Rochelle Short

Rochelle Short is a freelance writer, editor, and social media consultant. She is an Airbnb host, welcoming folks from around the world into her home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.